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Title: In the Clutch of the War-God
Author: Milo Hastings
Release Date: September 26, 2004 [EBook #13526]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE CLUTCH OF THE WAR-GOD ***
Produced by Roger Taft, grandson of the author, and
Jim Tinsley.
In the Clutch of the War-God
In three parts, from Physical Culture magazine, July - September, 1911.
PART ONE
In the Clutch of the War-God
THE TALE OF THE ORIENT'S INVASION OF THE OCCIDENT, AS CHRONICLED IN
THE HUMANICULTURE SOCIETY'S "HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY"
By Milo Hastings
FOREWORD: In this strange story of another day,
the author has "dipped into the future" and viewed
with his mind's eye the ultimate effect of
America's self-satisfied complacency, and her
persistent refusal to heed the lessons of Oriental
progress. I can safely promise the reader who
takes up this unique recital of the twentieth
century warfare, that his interest will be
sustained to the very end by the interesting
deductions and the keen insight into the
possibilities of the present trend of
international affairs exhibited by the
author.--Bernarr Macfadden.
"Kindly be prepared to absent yourself at a moment's notice." It was
Goyu speaking, blundering, old fool. He was standing in the doorway
with his kitchen-apron on, and an iron spoon in his hand.
"What on earth is the matter?" asked Ethel Calvert, tossing aside
her French novel in alarm, for such a lack of deference in Goyu
meant vastly more than appeared upon the surface.
"I am informed," replied Goyu, gravely, "that there has been an
anti-foreign riot and that many are killed."
"And father?" gasped Ethel.
"He was upon the grain boat," said Goyu.
"But where is he now?"
"I do not know," returned Goyu, locking nervously over his shoulder.
"But I fear he has not fared well--the boat was dynamited--that's
what started the trouble."
With a gasp Ethel recalled that an hour before she had heard an
explosion which she had supposed to be blasting. Faint with fear,
she staggered toward a couch and fell forward upon the cushions.
* * *
When the girl regained consciousness the house was dark. Slowly she
recalled the event that had culminated the uneventful day. She
wondered if Goyu had been lying or had gone crazy. The darkness was
not reassuring--her father always came home before dark, and his
absence now confirmed her fears. She wondered if the old servant had
deserted her. He was a poor stick anyway; Japanese men who had pride
or character no longer worked as domestics in the households of
foreigners.
Ethel Calvert was the daughter of an American grain merchant who
represented the interests of the North American Grain Exporters
Association at the seaport of Otaru, in Hokaidi, the North Island of
Japan. Three years before her mother had died of homesickness and a
broken heart--although the Japanese physician had called it
tuberculosis, and had prescribed life in a tent! Had they not
suffered discomforts enough in that barbarous country without adding
insult to injury?
Ethel was bountifully possessed of the qualities of hothouse beauty.
Her jet black hair hung over the snowy skin of her temples in
striking contrast. Her form was of a delicate slenderness and her
movement easy and graceful with just a little of that languid
listlessness considered as a mark of well-bred femininity. She knew
that she was beautiful according to the standards of her own people
and her isolation from the swirl of the world's social life was to
her gall and wormwood.
The Calverts had never really "settled" in Japan, but had merely
remained there as homesick Americans indifferent to, or unjustly
prejudiced against the Japanese life about them. Now, in the year
1958, the growing anti-foreign feeling among the Japanese had added
to their isolation. Moreover, the Japanese bore the grain merchant
an especial dislike, for every patriotic Japanese was sore at heart
over the fact that, after a century of modern progress, Japan was
still forced to depend upon foreigners to supplement their food
supply.
In fact, they had oft heard Professor Oshima grieve over the
statistics of grain importation, as a speculator might mourn his
personal losses in the stock market.
* * *
For a time Ethel lay still and listened to the faint sound of voices
from a neighboring porch. Then the growing horror of the situation
came over her with anewed force; if her father was dead, she was not
only alone in the world, but stranded in a foreign and an unfriendly
country; for there were but few Americans left in the city.
The girl arose and crept nervously into the dining-room. She turned
on the electric light; everything seemed in order. She hurried over
to Goyu's room, and knocked. There was no answer. Then slowly
opening the door, she peered in--the room was empty and disordered.
Plainly the occupant had bundled together his few belongings and
flown.
Ethel stole back through the silent house and tremblingly took down
the telephone receiver. In vain she called the numbers of the few
American families of the city. Last on the list was the American
Consulate, and this time she received the curt information that the
consul had left the city by aeroplane "with the other foreigners."
The phrase struck terror into her heart. If the European population
had flown in such haste as to overlook her, clearly there was
danger. A great fear grew upon her. Afraid to remain where she was,
she tried to think of ways of escape. She could not steer an
aeroplane even if she were able to obtain one. Otaru was far from
the common ways of international traffic and the ships lying at
anchor in the harbor were freighters, Japanese owned and Japanese
manned.
Ethel looked at her watch--it was nine-twenty. She tiptoed to her
room.
An hour later she was in the street dressed in a tailored suit of
American make and carrying in her hand-bag a few trinkets and
valuables she had found in the house. Passing hurriedly through
quiet avenues, she was soon in the open country. The road she
followed was familiar to her, as she had traveled it many times by
auto.
For hours she walked rapidly on. Her unpracticed muscles grew tired
and her feet jammed forward in high-heeled shoes were blistered and
sore. But fear lent courage and as the first rays of the morning sun
peeked over the hill-tops, the refugee reached the outskirts of the
city of Sapporo.
Ethel made straightway for the residence of Professor Oshima, the
Soil Chemist of the Imperial Agricultural College of Hokiado--a
Japanese gentleman who had been educated and who had married abroad,
and a close friend of her father's. As she reached the door of the
Professor's bungalow, she pushed the bell, and sank exhausted upon
the stoop.
Some time afterward she half-dreamed and half realized that she
found herself neatly tucked between white silk sheets and lying on a
floor mattress of a Japanese sleeping-porch. A gentle breeze fanned
her face through the lattice work and low slanting sunbeams sifting
in between the shutters fell in rounded blotches upon the opposite
straw matting wall. For a time she lay musing and again fell asleep.
When she next awakened, the room was dimly lighted by a little
glowing electric bulb and Madame Oshima was sitting near her. Her
hostess greeted her cordially and offered her water and some fresh
fruit.
Madame Oshima was fully posted upon the riots and confirmed Ethel's
fears as to the fate of her father.
[Illustration: "But have I lost my figure?" inquired the lithe
Madame Oshima.]
"You will be safe here for the present," her hostess assured her.
"Professor Oshima has been called to Tokio; when he returns we will
see what can be done concerning your embarking for America."
Madame Oshima was of French descent but had fully adopted Japanese
customs and ways of thinking.
As soon as Ethel was up and about, her hostess suggested that she
exchange her American-made clothing for the Japanese costume of the
time. But Ethel was inclined to rebel.
"Why," she protested, "if I discarded my corsets I would lose my
figure."
"But have I lost my figure?" inquired the lithe Madame Oshima,
striking an attitude.
To this Ethel did not reply, but continued, "And I would look like a
man," for among the Japanese people tight-belted waists and flopping
skirts had long since been replaced by the kimo, a single-piece
garment worn by both sexes and which fitted the entire body with
comfortable snugness.
"And is a man so ill-looking?" asked her companion, smiling.
"Why, no, of course not, only he's different. Why, I couldn't wear a
kimo--people would see--my limbs," stammered the properly-bred
American girl.
"Why, no, they couldn't," replied Madame Oshima. "Not if you keep
your kimo on."
"But they would see my figure."
"Well, I thought you just said that was what you were afraid they
wouldn't see."
"But I don't mean that way--they--they could see the shape of my--my
legs," said Ethel, blushing crimson.
"Are you ashamed that your body has such vulgar parts?" returned the
older woman.
"No, of course not," said Ethel, choking back her embarrassment.
"But it's wicked for a girl to let men know such things."
"Oh, they all know it," replied Madame Oshima, "they learn it in
school."
At this the highly strung Ethel burst into sobs.
"There, there now," said her companion, regretting that she had
spoken sarcastically. "I forget that I once had such ideas also.
We'll talk some more about it after while. You are nervous and
worried now and must have more rest."
The next day Madame Oshima more tactfully approached the subject and
showed her protege that while in Rome it was more modest to do as
the Romans do; and that, moreover, it was necessary for her own good
and theirs that she attract as little attention as possible, and to
those that recognized her Caucasian blood appear, superficially, at
least, as a naturalized citizen of Japan.
So, amid blushes and tears, protestations and laughter, Ethel
accepted the kimo, or one-piece Japanese garment, and the outer
flowing cloak to be worn on state occasions when freedom of bodily
movement was not required. Her feather-adorned hat was discarded
altogether and her ill-shapen high-heeled boots replaced by airy
slippers of braided fiber.
Her rather short stature and her hair--which fortunately enough was
black--served to lessen her conspicuousness, especially when dressed
in the fashion followed by Japanese girls; and with the leaving off
of the use of cosmetics and the spending of several hours a day in
the flower garden even her pallid complexion suffered rapid change.
It was about a fortnight before Professor Oshima returned from
Tokio. Upon his arrival Ethel at once pleaded with him to be sent to
America, but the scientist slowly shook his head.
"It is too late," he said; "there is going to be a war."
Thus it happened that Ethel Calvert was retained in the Professor's
family as a sort of English tutor to his children, and introduced as
a relative of his wife, and no one suspected that she was one of the
hated Americans.
* * *
The trouble between Japan and the United States dated back to the
early part of the century. It was deep-seated and bitter, and was
not only the culmination of a rivalry between the leading nations of
the great races of mankind, but a rivalry between two great ideas or
policies that grew out in opposite directions from the age of
unprecedented mechanical and scientific progress that marked the
dawn of the twentieth century.
The pages of history had been turned rapidly in those years. The
United States, long known as the richest country, had also become
the most populous nation of the Caucasian world--and wealth and
population had made her vain.
But with all her material glory, there was not strength in American
sinews, nor endurance in her lungs, nor vigor in the product of her
loins. Her people were herded together in great cities, where they
slept in gigantic apartment houses, like mud swallows in a sand
bank. They overate of artificial food that was made in great
factories. They over-dressed with tight-fitting unsanitary clothing
made by the sweated labor of the diseased and destitute. They
over-drank of old liquors born of ancient ignorance and of new
concoctions born of prostituted science. They smoked and perfumed
and doped with chemicals and cosmetics--the supposed virtues of
which were blazoned forth on earth and sky day and night.
The wealth of the United States was enormous, yet it was chiefly in
the hands of the few. The laborers went forth from their rookeries
by subway and monorail, and served their shifts in the mills of
industry.
In turn, others took their places, and the mills ground night and
day.
Even the farm lands had been largely taken over by corporate
control. Crops on the plains were planted with power machinery. The
rough lands had all been converted into forests or game preserves
for the rich. Agriculture had been developed as a science, but not
as a husbandry. The forcing system had been generally applied to
plants and animals. Wonder-working nitrogenous fertilizers made at
Niagara and by the wave motors of the coast made all vegetation to
grow with artificial luxury. Corn-fed hogs and the rotund carcasses
of stall-fed cattle were produced on mammoth ranches for the
edification of mankind, and fowl were hatched by the billions in
huge incubators, and the chicks reared and slaughtered with scarcely
a touch of a human hand. And all this was under the control of
concentrated business organization. The old, sturdy, wasteful farmer
class had gone out of existence.
Only the rich who owned aeroplanes could afford to live in the
country. The poor had been forced to the cities where they could be
sheltered _en masse_, and fed, as it were, by machinery. New York
had a population of twenty-three millions. Manhattan Island had been
extended by filling in the shallows of the bay, until the Battery
reached almost to Staten Island. The aeroplane stations that topped
her skyscrapers stood, many of them, a quarter of a mile from the
ground.
As the materially greatest nation in the world, the United States
had an enormous national patriotism based on vanity. The larger
patriotism for humanity was only known in the prattle of her
preachers and idealists. America was the land of liberty--and
liberty had come to mean the right to disregard the rights of
others.
In Japan, too, there had been changes, but Japan had received the
gifts of science in a far different spirit. With her, science had
been made to serve the more ultimate needs of the race, rather than
the insane demand for luxuries.
The Japanese had applied to the human species the scientific
principles of heredity, nutrition and physical development, which in
America had been confined to plants and animals. The old spirit of
Japanese patriotism had grown into a semi-religious worship of
racial fitness and a moral pride developed which eulogized the
sacrifice of the liberties of the individual to the larger needs of
the people. Legal restrictions of the follies of fashion in dress
and food, the prohibition of alcohol and narcotics, the restriction
of unwise marriages, and the punishments of immorality were
stoically accepted, not as the blue laws of religious fanaticism,
but as requisites of racial progress and a mark of patriotism.
And while Japan showed no signs of the extravagant wealth seen in
America, she was far from being poor. She had gained little from
centralized and artificial industry, but she had wasted less in
insane competition and riotous luxury.
But in Japanese life there was one unsolved problem. That was her
food supply. Intensive culture would do wonders and the just
administration of wealth and the physical efficiency of her people
had eliminated the waste of supporting the non-productive, but an
acre is but a small piece of land at most, and Japan had long since
passed the point where the number of her people exceeded the number
of her acres. A quarter of an acre would produce enough grain and
coarse vegetables to keep a man alive, but the Japanese wanted eggs
and fruit and milk for their children; and they wanted cherry trees
and chrysanthemums, lotus ponds and shady gardens with little
waterfalls.
[Illustration: In the nineteenth month of the war, the emblem of the
Rising Sun was hoisted over Manila.]
Now if the low birth rate that had resulted when the examinations
for parenthood were first enforced had continued, Japan would not
have been so crowded, but after the first generation of marriage
restriction the percentage of those who reached the legal standard
of fitness was naturally increased. The scientists and officials had
from time to time considered the advisability of increasing the
restrictions--and yet why should they? The Japanese people had
submitted to the prohibition of the marriage of the unfit, but they
loved children; and, with their virile outdoor life, the instinct of
procreation was strong within them. True, the assignable lands in
Japan continued to grow smaller, but what reason was there for
stifling the reproductive instincts of a vigorous people in a great
unused world half populated by a degenerate humanity?
So Japan was land hungry--not for lands to conquer, as of old, nor
yet for lands to exploit commercially, but for food and soil and
breathing space for her children.
Among opponents of Japanese racial expansion, the United States was
the greatest offender. Japanese immigration had long since been
forbidden by the United States, and American diplomats had more
recently been instrumental in bringing about an agreement among the
powers of Europe by which all outlets were locked against the
overflowing stream of Asiatic population.
Indeed, America called Japan the yellow peril; and with her own
prejudices to maintain, her institutions of graft and exploitation
to fatten her luxury-loving lords and her laborers to appease, she
was in mortal terror of the simple efficiency of the Japanese people
who had taken the laws of Nature into their own hands and shaped
human evolution by human reason.
As Commodore Perry had forced the open door of commerce upon Japan a
century before, so Japan decided to force upon America the
acknowledgment of any human being's right to live in any land on
earth. She had tried first by peaceful means to secure these ends,
but failing here and driven on by the lash of her own necessity,
Japan had come to feel that force alone could break the clannish
resistance of the Anglo-Saxon, who having gone into the four corners
of the earth and forced upon the world his language, commerce and
customs, now refused to receive ideas or citizens in return.
And thus it came to pass that the West and the East were in the
clutch of the War-God. No one knew just what the war would be like,
for the wars of the last century had been bluffing, bulldozing
affairs concerning trade agreements or Latin-American revolutions.
There had been no great clash of great ideas and great peoples.
The harbors of the world were filled with huge, floating,
flat-topped battleships, within the capacious interiors of which
were packed the parts of aeroplanes as were the soldiers of the
Grecian army in their wooden horse at Troy, for assembling and
launching them. But the engines of warfare which men had repeatedly
claimed would make war so terrible as to end war, had failed to
fulfill anticipations. The means of defense and the rules of the
game had kept pace with the means of destruction. The flat tops of
the warships, which served as alighting platforms for friendly
planes, were heavily armored against missiles dropped from
unfriendly ones. The explosion of a bomb on top of a plate of steel
is a rather tame affair, and guns sufficient to penetrate armor
plate could not be carried on air-craft. The big guns of
battleships, which had for a time grown bigger and bigger, had now
gone quite out of use, for the coming of the armored top had been
followed by the toad-stool warship, which had a roof like an
inverted saucer, and was provided with water chambers, the opening
of the traps of which caused a sudden sinking of the vessel until
the eave dipped beneath the water level and left exposed only the
sloping roof from which the heaviest shot would glance like a bullet
from the frozen surface of a pond.
The first two years of war dragged on in the Pacific. American grain
was of course cut off from Japan and the government authorities
ordered the people to plow up their flower gardens and plant food
crops.
The Americans had too much territory to protect to take the
offensive and their Pacific fleet lay close to Manila, where, with
the help of land aviation forces, they hoped to hold the possession
of the islands, which according to the popular American view was
supposed to be the prize for which the Japanese had gone to war.
The test of the actual warfare proved several things upon which
mankind had long been in doubt. One of these was that, with all the
expert mechanism that science and invention had supplied, the
personal equation of the man could not be eliminated. Aviation
increased the human element in warfare. To shoot straight requires
calm nerves, but to fly straight requires also agility and
endurance.
The American aeroplanes were made of steel and aluminum, and when
they hit the water they sank like lead, but the Japanese planes were
made of silk and bamboo, and their engines were built with multiple
compartment air tanks and after a battle the Japanese picked up the
floating engines and placed them, ready to use, in inexpensive new
planes.
* * *
In the nineteenth month of the war, Manila surrendered, and the
emblem of the rising sun was hoisted throughout the Philippine
Islands. The remnant of the American fleet retreated across the
Pacific, and the world supposed that the war was over.
But Japan refused the American proposals of peace, which conceded
them the Philippines, unless the United States be also opened to
universal immigration. And so it was that when Japan, in addition to
accepting the Philippines, demanded the right to settle her cheap
labor in the United States, the American authorities cut short the
peace negotiation and began concentrating troops and battleships
along the Pacific Coast in fear of an invasion of California.
* * *
With Ethel Calvert's adoption into Professor Oshima's family there
came a great change in her life. At first, she accepted Japanese
food and Japanese clothes as the old-time prisoner accepted stripes
and bread and water. But her captivity proved less repulsive than
she expected and she was soon confessing to herself that there was
much good in Japanese life. Professor and Madame Oshima were not
talkative on general topics but the books on the shelves of the
Professor's library proved a godsend to the awakening mind of the
young woman. Indeed, after a mental diet of French and English
fiction upon which Ethel had been reared, the works on science and
humaniculture, the dreams of universal brotherhood, the epics of a
race in its conquests of disease and poverty were as meat and drink
to her eager, hungry mind.
As the war went on, the horror of it all grew upon her. She read
Howki's "America." She didn't believe it all, but she realized that
most of it was true. She wondered why her people were fighting to
keep out the Japanese. She marvelled that the Japanese who had
adopted such lofty ideals of race culture could find the heart to go
to war. She wished she might be free to go to the government
officials at Tokio and Washington to show them the folly of it all.
Surely if the American statesmen understood Japanese ideals and the
superiority of their habits and customs for the production of happy
human beings, they would never have waged war to keep them out of
the States.
* * *
"In three days we leave Japan," said Professor Oshima, as he sat
down to dinner one evening in the early part of April, 1960.
"All?" asked Komoru, the Professor's secretary.
"We four," replied Oshima, indicating those at the table, "the
children will stay with my mother. I'll need your assistance, and as
for Miss Ethel, she cannot well stay here, so I have had you two
listed. Although it's a little irregular, I am sure it will not be
questioned, for I know more about American soils than any other man
in Japan."
Ethel glanced apprehensively at Komoru. She had never quite
understood her own attitude toward that taciturn young Japanese whom
she had seen daily for two years without hardly making his
acquaintance. She admired him and yet she feared him.
Professor Oshima was saying that she had been "listed" with Komoru
for some great journey. What did it mean? What could she do? Again
she looked up at the secretary; but far from seeing any trace of
scheme or plot in his enigmatical countenance, she found him to be
considering the situation with the same equanimity with which he
would have recorded the calcium content of a soil sample.
As for Professor and Madame Oshima, they seemed equally unruffled
about the proposed journey, and not at all inclined to elucidate the
mystery. Experience had taught the younger woman that when
information was not offered it was unwise to ask questions, so when
the Professor busied himself with much ransacking of his pamphlets
and papers and his wife became equally occupied with overhauling the
family wardrobe and getting the children off to their grandmother's,
Ethel accepted unquestionably the statement that she would be
limited to twenty kilograms of clothing and ten kilograms of other
personal effects, and lent assistance as best she could to the
enterprise in hand.
On the third day the little party, with their light luggage boarded
a train for Hakodate, at which point they arrived at noon. Hurrying
along the docks among others burdened like themselves, they came to
a great low-lying, turtle-topped warship; and, passing down a
gangway, entered the brilliantly lighted interior.
The constant flood of new passengers came, not in mixed and motley
groups, as the ordinary crowd of passengers, but by two, male and
female, as the unclean beasts into the ark. And they were all young
in years and athletic in frame--the very cream and flower of the
race.
[Illustration: Every few seconds an aeroplane shot into the air and
joined the endless winged line.]
Late that evening the vessel steamed out of port, and during the
next two days was joined by a host of other war craft, and the great
squadron moved in orderly procession to the eastward.
One point, that Ethel soon discovered was that, in addition to being
excellent physical specimens, all the men, and many of the women,
were proficient as aviators. Of these facts life on board bore ample
evidence, for the great fan ventilated gymnasium was the most
conspicuous part of the ship's equipment and here in regular drills
and in free willed disportive exercise those on board kept
themselves from stagnation during the idleness of the voyage. Into
this gymnasium work Ethel entered with great gusto, for there was a
revelation in the discovery of her own physical capabilities that
surprised and fascinated her.
In the other chief interest of her fellow passengers, Ethel was an
apt pupil, for though woefully ignorant of aviation, she was eager
to learn. She spent many hours in the company of Professor or Madame
Oshima, studying aeroplane construction and operation from the
displayed mechanisms on board. In fact, they found the great roomy
hold of the ship was packed with aeroplane parts. Small gasoline
turbines were stored in crates by the hundreds; also wings and
rudders knocked down and laid flat against each other and still
lower down in the framework of the floating palace were vast stores
of gasoline.
At the end of two weeks the Japanese squadron was in latitude 34°
north, longitude 125° west, and headed directly for the Los Angeles
district of Southern California--the richest and most densely
populated area of the United States.
One evening, just at dark, after they had been in sight of the
American aerial scouts all day, the Japanese fleet changed its
course and turned sharply to the southward. Now Panama was six days'
steaming from Los Angeles and less than three days from New Orleans.
So the authorities at Washington ordered all warships and available
soldiers on the Gulf Coast to embark for the Isthmus.
Meanwhile there was much going on beneath the armor plate of the
Japanese transports, and on the fourth day of their southward
movement the great trap doors were swung down and aeroplane parts
were run out on the tramways, the planes rapidly set up by skilled
workmen, and firmly hooked to the floor. Above and below deck they
stood in great rows like lines of automobiles in a garage.
Towards sundown the forward planes were manned and in quick
succession shot down the runways and took to the air. Ethel and her
companions were below air the time and hardly knew what was going
on. Their luggage had been taken up some time ago, except for an
extra kima, which they had been ordered to put on. In their turn
they were now called out and ordered to go above, that is, the names
of the men were called and Ethel knew that she was listed as Madame
Komoru, a thing that made her shiver every time it was brought to
her attention.
An exclamation or astonishment escaped the lips of the more
impulsive American girl as she came on deck; for as far as the eye
could see the gray flat tops of the war vessels were covered with
the drab-winged planes, while every few seconds a plane shot into
the air and joined an endless winged line that stretched away to the
northeast.
"Komoru eighty-five: Oshima eighty-six."
The intent of that command was clear and Ethel was soon settled
immediately behind the young secretary in the little bamboo car of a
Japanese plane-of-war.
The propeller started with a shrill musical hum; they raced down the
runway; dipped for a second toward the water; rose, and sailed
swiftly up and on toward the dark line of Mexico, that lay in the
evening shadow cast by the curved surface of the Pacific Ocean.
(To be continued.)
PART TWO.
In the Clutch of the War-God
THE TALE OF THE ORIENT'S INVASION OF THE OCCIDENT, AS CHRONICLED IN
THE HUMANICULTURE SOCIETY'S "NOTES ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY".
By Milo Hastings
Synopsis of Previous Installment: In the year
1958, Ethel Calvert, a daughter of an American
grain-merchant, residing in Japan, because of her
father's death in an anti-foreign riot, is forced
to take refuge with Madame Oshima, the French wife
of a Japanese scientist. She becomes accustomed to
the mode of living followed by the Japanese, and
is finally persuaded to adopt the costume of the
land of her exile. War is declared between Japan
and the United States, and Professor Oshima, and
Komoru, his Secretary, together with Madame Oshima
and Ethel Calvert, sail for United States in a
Japanese war vessel. When near the Pacific Coast,
the many men and women who have been passengers on
the vessel, leave the ship by means of aeroplanes,
and sail eastwardly over Southern California.
The air cut by Ethel's face at a ninety-mile gait, and she gripped
nervously at the hand-rails of the car. Then, regaining confidence,
she began to drink in the novel view about her. Ahead were the
drab-winged aeroplanes growing smaller and smaller until they became
mere specks against the darkening sky. She turned to the rear and
watched the myriads of humans, like birds, rising from the
transports that still lay in the sunshine. There were literally
thousands of them. She wondered if human eyes had ever before
witnessed so marvelous a sight.
They had come over the mainland of Mexico now and were flying at a
height of about half a mile. Shrouded in the tropical twilight, the
landscape below was but dimly discernible. As the darkness came on,
Ethel discovered that a small light glowed from the side of the car
in front of the driver. Gripping the hand-rail, she made bold to
raise herself; and, stopping beneath the searchlight and machine-gun
that hung, one beneath the other, on swivels in the center of the
framework, she peered forward over Komoru's shoulder.
The taciturn steersman turned and smiled but said nothing. Ethel
noted carefully the equipment of the driver's box. It was a
duplicate throughout of the dummy steering gear with which she had
practiced in the ship's gymnasium. One conspicuous addition,
however, was an object illuminated by the small glow lamp that had
attracted her attention. This proved to be chart or map mounted at
either end on short rollers. As the girl watched it, she perceived
that it moved slowly. A red line was drawn across the map and
hovering over this was the tip of a metal pointer. A compass and a
watch were mounted at one side of the chart case.
Ethel watched the chart creep back on its rollers and reasoned that
the pointer indicated the location of the aeroplane. She wondered
how the movement of the chart was regulated with that of the plane.
Finally she decided to ask Komoru.
"By the landmarks and the time," he said. "Do you see that blue
coming in on the northeast corner of the map?"
"Yes."
"Well, watch it."
After a few minutes of waiting the words "_Gulf of Mexico_" rolled
out upon the chart. "Why, that can't be," said Ethel, "we just left
the Pacific Ocean."
"But we have crossed the Isthmus of Tehauntepec," replied Komoru;
"it is only a hundred miles wide."
His companion looked over the side of the car and to the front and.
to the right, she could see by the perfectly flat horizon that they
were approaching water.
"The map is unrolling too fast," said Komoru, as the pointer stood
over the edge of the indicated water--and he pushed back the little
lever on the clock mechanism that rolled the chart. "We have a
little head wind," he added.
Ethel resumed her seat and sat musing for a half hour or so. Komoru
looked around and called to her.
"Look over to your left," he said. "The lights of Vera Cruz. We are
making better time now," he added, again adjusting the regulator on
the clock work.
The driver contemplated his compass carefully and shifted his course
a few points to the right. Ethel settled in her bamboo cage and
pulled her aviation cap down tightly to shield her face and ears
from the wind pressure.
For hours they sat so--the girl's heart throbbing with awe, wonder
and fear; the man unemotional and silent, a steady, firm hand on the
wheel, his feet on the engine controls and his goggled eyes glancing
critically at compass or watch or out into the starlit waste of the
night, disturbed only by the whirl and shadow of other planes which
with varying speed passed or were passed, as the aerial host rushed
onward. There were only small tail lights, one above and one below
the main plane, to warn following drivers against collision.
* * *
With her head bent low upon her knees, Ethel at length fell into a
doze. She was aroused by Komoru's calling, and straightening up with
a start, she arose and leaned forward over the driver. Komoru was
looking intently at the scroll chart. In a moment she designed the
cause of his interest, for there had rolled across the forward
surface of the chart the outline of a coast.
In the far left-hand corner was marked the city of Galveston, and to
the right was the Sabine River that forms the boundary between Texas
and Louisiana. Ethel raised her eyes from the map and looked far out
to the Northwest. Sure enough, she discerned the lights of a city at
the point where Galveston was indicated by the chart.
"How far have we come?" she asked in astonishment.
"Eight hundred miles," replied Komoru. "See, it is nearly
two-thirty. The first men with the faster planes were to have
arrived at one o'clock."
A little later they passed over the dimly discernible coast line,
some thirty or forty miles to the east of Galveston. Komoru
carefully consulted his compass, watch and aneroid, and made a
slight change in his course.
"Where do we land?" asked the girl.
Komoru steadied the wheel with one hand; and, reaching into the
breast pocket of his aviator's jacket, he produced a little
document-like roll. "These are the orders," he explained, and asked
Ethel to spread out the papers on the chart case.
The instruction sheet read:
"Fly twenty-eight minutes beyond the coast line,
which will place you ten or twenty miles northwest
of the town of Beaumont, where a fire of some sort
will be lighted about 3 a.m.
"When you alight locate one or more farm houses
and attach one of the enclosed notices to the
door.
"This done, fly toward the Beaumont signal fire
and assist in subduing the town and capturing all
petroleum works in the region.
"At 6 a.m., if petroleum works are safe, follow
the lead of the red plane and fly northwest as far
as Fort Worth, returning by nightfall to oil
region."
Ethel read the paper over and over as she held it down out of the
wind by the dim glow lamp. She wanted to ask questions. She wondered
what was expected of her. She wondered again as to what was expected
of the entire invasion and why the women had been brought along. But
her questions did not find verbal expression, for she had schooled
herself to await developments.
The roller chart had now come to a stop and showed the red line that
marked their course terminating in a cross to the northwest of the
town of Beaumont. Komoru tilted the plane downward and flew for a
time near the earth. Then checking the speed, he ran it lightly
aground in an open field a little distance from a clump of
buildings.
The driver got out and stretched his cramped limbs. Taking a hand
glow lamp he ran carefully over the mechanism of the plane. Then he
opened a locker and took out two small magazine pistols. One he
handed to Ethel.
"Don't use it," he said, "until you have to."
"Will you go with me?" he asked, "to tack the poster, or will you
stay with the plane?"
"I'll stay here," she replied.
Komoru walked off rapidly towards the house. Presently the stillness
was interrupted by the vociferous barking of a dog; Then there was a
sound as of some one picking a taut wire and the voice of the dog
curdled in a final yelp.
In a few minutes Komoru was back. "Dogs are no good," he said; "they
produce nothing but noise."
"Will you kindly get aboard, Miss Ethel? There is much to do."
[Illustration: By carefully shielding his flash lamp, Komoru was
able to read a duplicate of the notice he had just fastened up.]
Ethel obeyed; meanwhile Komoru inspected the surface of the ground
for a few yards in front of the plane. Returning he climbed into his
seat and started the engine. They arose without mishap.
Within a mile or two, Komoru picked out another farm house and made
a landing nearby.
"I will go with you this time," said Ethel courageously.
Approaching an American residence, Ethel suddenly found herself
conscious of the fact that she was dressed in a most unladylike
Japanese kimo. For a moment the larger sentiments of the occasion
were replaced by the womanly query, "What will people say?" Then she
laughed inwardly at the absurdity of her thought.
Komoru produced the roll from his pocket and unwound a small cloth
poster. This he fastened to the door jam by pressing in the thumb
tacks that were sewed in the hem. Then noting another white blotch
on the opposite side of the door, he carefully shielded his lamp,
and made a light. It was a duplicate of the notice he had just
fastened up and read:
WARNING
"Two hundred thousand Japanese have invaded Texas
and are desirous of possessing your property. You
are respectfully requested to depart immediately
and apply to your government for property
elsewhere. All buildings not vacated within
twenty-four hours will be promptly burned--unless
displaying a flag truce for sufficient reason.
Kindly co-operate with us in avoiding bloodshed.
(Signed) The Japanese People."
"We were late," said Komoru as they walked back toward the plane.
"Two hundred thousand," he mused; "what you call 'bluff,' I guess."
"It's growing light," said Ethel, as they reached the plane.
"Yes, a little," replied Komoru, as he walked around to the front.
"An ugly ditch," he said. "We shall have to use the helicopter."
Taking his seat he threw down a lever and what had appeared to be
two small superimposed planes above the main plane assumed the form
of flat screws. Letting the engine gain full headway, Komoru threw
the clutch on this shafting, and the vertical screws started
revolving in opposite directions with a great downward rush of air.
The whole apparatus tilted a bit, and then slowly but steadily
arose.
When they had reached altitude of a hundred feet or so, the driver
shifted the power to the quieter horizontal propeller and the plane
sidled off like an eagle dropping from a crag.
Tilting the plane upward, Komoru circled for altitude. Presently he
called back over his shoulder, saying that he saw the signal fire at
Beaumont at the same time heading the plane in that direction.
As the dawn began to break in the East, the occasional passing
lights of flying planes became less bright and soon the planes
themselves stood out against the sky like shadows. And then the
whole majestic train of aerial invaders became visible as they
poured over the southern horizon---a never ending stream.
Komoru and Ethel landed in a meadow already well filled with planes
and following the others, hurried along toward the town.
There had been some fighting in the streets and a few buildings were
burning. Walking along to the main street of the town, they came
upon a crowd of Japanese who were collected in front of a building
from which the contents were being dragged hastily.
"What is it?" asked Komoru of one of the men.
"Hardware store," replied the other; "we've rifled all of them for
the weapons and explosives."
"Where are all the people?" asked Ethel. "The Americans--are they
killed or captured?"
"They are at home in their houses," answered the man, who seemed
well posted. "I was with the first squad to arrive. We captured the
policemen and then took the telephone switchboard. Japanese
operators are in there now. They have called up every one in town
and explained the situation, and advised the people to stay indoors,
telling them that every house would be burned from which people
emerged or shots were fired. The operators are working on the rural
numbers yet. We hold the telegraph also, and are sending out
exaggerated reports of the size of the Japanese invasion."
* * *
A man wearing a blue sash came hurrying up. He stopped before the
group at the hardware store and gestured for silence.
"The town is well in hand," he said, "and only those of you who are
detailed here as guards need remain longer; the others will get back
to their planes and await the rise of their designated leaders for
the flights of the day.
"Come," said Komoru to his companion. But Ethel did not move. Her
mind was racked with perplexity. Here she was in a city of her own
people. Why should she continue to accompany this young Japanese
whom, despite his gentlemanly conduct, she instinctively feared? Yet
what else could she do? She was dressed in the peculiar attire of
the invaders, and would certainly have trouble in convincing an
American of her identity.
[Illustration: As they passed near other planes, Ethel noted that in
many cases the women were driving.]
"I must ask you to hurry," said Komoru, as the others moved off.
With an effort Ethel gathered her wavering emotions in hand and went
with him. If she must go, she reasoned it were well not to arouse
Komoru's suspicion of her loyalty.
A few minutes later they were again in the air, following the lead
of a plane with bright red wings--the flag-ship, as it were, of the
group.
In a half hour the expedition was approaching Houston. Coming over
the city, the leader circled high and waited until his followers
were better massed.
"Are we going to attack the town?" inquired Ethel, as Komoru asked
her for the water-bottle.
"Oh, no," he replied, "nothing of the sort; we are simply bluffing.
There are a number of expeditions going out to-day. We must make the
appearance of a great invasion."
"How many planes are there all told?"
Komoru smiled. "Not so many," he said.
"But how many?" persisted Ethel.
"Fifteen thousand, maybe," Komoru replied.
"To invade a country with nearly two hundred million inhabitants! We
will surely all be killed."
Komoru smiled.
"By sheer force of numbers," explained Ethel.
"Wait and see," replied her enigmatical companion.
For hours the little aerial squadron sailed through the balmy air of
Texas. They passed over Austin and Waco and Fort Worth and Dallas.
They turned eastward and passed over Texarkana, and thence south to
impress the people of Shreveport.
The excitement evinced in the towns increased as the news of their
flight was wired ahead. They were frequently shot at by groups of
excited citizens or occasional companies of militia, but at the
height and speed at which they were flying the bullets went wide.
One plane was lost. Something must have snapped. It doubled up and
went tumbling downward like a wounded pigeon.
The sun was dropping toward the western horizon. The invaders had
been flying for ten hours. They had been without food or sleep for
thirty-six hours. Save for the brief relaxation of the morning,
Komoru had not taken his hands from the steering wheel, nor his foot
from the engine control since the previous sunset in the Bay of
Tehauntepec.
[Illustration: The two women of Aryan blood worked together in the
cotton field side by side with the Orientals.]
As they passed near other planes, Ethel noted that in many cases the
women were driving. Notwithstanding her dislike for him, the girl
found herself wishing that she could relieve Komoru.
She pondered over his "wait and see" and began to discern a new
possibility in an invasion of thirty thousand Japanese. She tried to
imagine one of the society favorites of her Chicago girlhood sitting
in front of her driving that plane. She remembered distinctly that
aeroplane racing was a part of the diversion of such men and that
five or six hours of driving was considered quite a feat.
The more she considered the man before her, the more she marvelled
at his powers. She confessed he interested her; she wondered why she
disliked him. The only answer that seemed acceptable was that he was
"not her kind."
Towards dusk, they hove in sight of the derricks of the Beaumont oil
region. The leader with the red plane descended in a large meadow.
Komoru was well to the front and brought his plane to earth a few
meters from the red wings. The man in the flag plane who had that
day led them over a thousand miles and a score of cities got out and
stretched himself. With an exclamation of joyful surprise, Ethel
recognized that he was Professor Oshima.
The Japanese camped where they were for the night. The wings of the
planes were guyed to the ground with cordage and little steel
stakes. Beneath such improvised tents the tired aerial cavalrymen
rolled themselves in their sleeping blankets and for twelve hours
the camp was as quiet as a graveyard.
That day had been a great day in history; it was the first
consequential aerial invasion that the world had ever known. While
the arrivals of the morning had been circling in fear-inspiring
flights above the neighboring states, the later starters from the
Japanese squadron had continued to arrive in the oil regions. Like
migrating birds, they settled down over the rich fields and grazing
lands of that wonderful strip of flat, black-soiled prairie that
stretches westward from the south center of Louisiana until it
emerges into the great semi-arid cattle plains of southern Texas.
The region, though one of the richest in the United States, was but
sparsely settled. Save for the few thousand white laborers who were
supported by the oil industry, the whole resident population were
negroes who were worked under imported white foremen in the rice and
truck lands of the region.
The negroes were panic stricken by the Japanese invasion and made
practically no resistance. In two or three days, the country for a
forty-mile radius around Beaumont was cleared of Americans and
practically the entire oil region of Texas with its vast storage
tanks at Port Arthur on the Sabine River, were in the hands of the
invaders.
There were not ten regiments of American soldiers within five
hundred miles. The great mass of the American army had been rushed
weeks before to southern California, and the remnant left in the
Gulf region had more recently been hastened to Panama. In fact, the
American squadron had steamed into Colon on the very morning the
Japanese alighted on Texas soil.
On the second morning of their arrival, Japanese officials circling
above the captured region, roughly allotted the land to Captains
under whose leadership were a hundred planes each. The captains then
assigned each couple places to stake their plane, which were located
a hundred meters apart, allowing to each about two and a half acres
of land.
Professor Oshima and Komoru, as soil chemists, were constantly on
the go making studies of the land and advising with the other
experts as to the crops to plant, and the methods of tillage for the
various locations.
In the cotton lands, where Ethel and her associates were located,
the soil was immediately put to a fuller use. The cotton plants were
thinned and pruned and between the rows quick growing vegetables
were planted. Elsewhere the great pastures were broken up with
captured kerosene-driven gang plows and by dint of hard labor the
sod was quickly reduced to a fit state for intensive cultivation.
The outside work of the professor and his secretary threw Ethel
altogether in the company of Madame Oshima. For this fact she was
very grateful, as her aversion to Komoru, to whom she was nominally
bound, grew more and more a source of worry and fear. So the two
women of Aryan blood worked together in the cotton field side by
side with the Orientals--worked and waited and wondered what was
awing in the surrounding world.
The gasoline wagons came around and refilled the fuel tanks of the
planes. Mechanics inspected the engines carefully and replaced
defective parts. The rice cakes and soyu brought from Japan, had
been replaced by a diet of wheat and maize products and fresh fruits
and vegetables taken from the captured stores and gardens. Such
captured foods, however, had all been inspected by the dieteticians,
and those of doubtful wholesomeness destroyed or placed under lock
and key to be used only as a last resort.
Thus weeks passed. The green things of Japanese planting had poked
their tender shoots through the black American soil. There had been
no fighting except in few cases, where a company of foolhardy
militia or a local posse had tried to attach the Japanese outposts.
American aeroplanes had wisely staid away.
But the fight was yet to come. The Federal Government had recalled
its ships from Panama and was bringing back the soldiers from
California. On the great flat prairie between Galveston and Houston,
a mighty military camp was being established. Aeroplane sheds were
erected and repair shops built. Long lines of army tents were
pitched in close proximity. Army canteens were established that the
thirsty soldiers might get pure liquor and good tobacco and a few
rods away--over the line--other grog shops were opened wherein were
sold similar goods not so guaranteed. Gambling sharks arrived and
set up shell games and bedraggled prostitutes--outcasts from urban
centers of debauchery---came and camped nearby and made night
hideous with their obscene revelry.
So the American soldier prepared for battle against the enemy who,
fifty miles away, slept undisturbed in the midst of gardens beneath
the wings of their aeroplanes.
Never since Roman phalanx moved against the hordes of disorganized
barbarians had such extremes of method in warfare been pitted
against each other. Indeed it is doubtful if the invasion of the
Japanese should be called war at all. They were not blood-thirsty.
In fact, the Japanese invaders had sent word to the American
Government asserting their peaceful intentions if they were
unmolested, though threatening dire vengeance by firing cities and
poisoning water supplies if they were attacked.
Madame Oshima shook her head. "Such talk is only pretense," she
said, "the Japanese intend to live in America and would never so
embitter the people--and it will not be necessary."
Ethel was in doubt. She pictured the Japanese planes flying above
the unprotected inland cities dropping conflagration bombs upon
shingled roof or casks of prussic acid into open reservoirs. She
wished she were out of it all. She wanted to escape and yet she knew
not how.
The Americans made no hasty attacks. They feared the threats of the
Japanese and awaited the gathering of many hundred thousand
soldiers. At the end of four weeks the American army was spread in a
giant semi-circle surrounding the Japanese encampment from coast to
coast. Along the Gulf Coast was also a line of American battleships,
so that the Japanese encampment was entirely surrounded with an
almost continuous line of aeroplane destroying guns.
All preparations were at last complete and with cavalry beneath and
aeroplanes above, the American strategists planned a dash across the
Japanese territory with the belief that the outlying lines of
artillery would bring to earth those that succeeded in getting into
the air.
* * *
One evening at the hour of twilight, messengers passed rapidly among
the Japanese distributing maps and orders to prepare for flight.
Late that night, their possessions made ready for flight, Komoru and
Ethel sat with Professor and Madame Oshima beneath the latter's
plane.
"Our scouts have come to the conclusion," said Oshima, "that a
cavalry attack is to be expected in the early morning. So our plan
is for a signal plane to rise at two o'clock directly over the
center of our territory. It will carry a bright yellow light.
Beginning with the outlying groups our forces are to fly toward the
light, rising as they go. Attaining an altitude of two miles they
are thence to fly due north as our maps show. We will suffer some
loss, but two miles high and at night I guess American gunners will
not inflict great damage."
Ethel shuddered.
"Do you think the American aviators will follow us?" asked Komoru.
"That depends," replied the older man, "upon the reception we give
them; we have them outnumbered."
"They carry men gunners," said Madame Oshima.
"So," said the Professor, "but shooting from an aeroplane depends
not so much upon the gunner as upon the steersman. Their planes
wabble, the metal frame work is too stiff, it doesn't yield to the
air pressure."
Along such lines the conversation continued for an hour or so.
Neither the men nor Madame Oshima seemed the least bit excited over
the prospects; but Ethel, striving to keep up external appearances,
was inwardly torn with warring emotions.
Making an excuse of wishing to look for something among her luggage,
the girl finally escaped and walked quickly toward the other plane.
But instead of stopping, she passed by and continued down between
the rows of cotton, avoiding as much as possible the lights that
dotted the field about her.
"Oh, God!" she repeated under her breath; "Oh, God! I can't go! I
won't go!"
For some time she walked on briskly trying to calm her feverish mind
and reason out a sane course of procedure.
She was passing thus where the lights of two planes glowed fifty
meters at either side, when she stumbled heavily over some dark
object between the cotton rows. She turned to see what it was; and,
bending forward, discerned in the starlight the body of a man. She
started to run; then, fearing pursuit the more, checked her speed.
As she did so some one grasped her arm and a heavy hand was clapped
over her mouth.
"Keep quiet," commanded her captor hoarsely. In another instant he
had bent her back over his knee and thrown her--or rather dropped
her for she did not resist--upon the soft earth beneath.
"If you make a sound, I'll have to shoot," he said, resting a heavy
knee upon her chest and clasping her slender wrist in a vise-like
grip of a single hand.
The girl breathed heavily.
The man reached toward his hip pocket and drawing forth a bright
metallic object held it close to her face. Her breath stopped short.
Then a flood of light struck her full in the eyes, as her captor
pressed the button on his flash lamp.
"God! a woman!" the man gasped. The exclamation and voice were
clearly not Japanese.
Ethel felt the grip loosen from her wrists and the weight shift from
her chest.
"You're no Japanese!" he said under his breath, at the same time
letting the glowing flash lamp fall from his hand.
Presently Ethel raised her head and reached for the lamp where it
lay wasting its rays against the black soil. She now turned the glow
on the other and saw kneeling beside her a young man in American
clothes. He was hatless and coatless and his soft gray shirt was
torn and mud bespattered. A massive head of uncombed hair crowned a
handsome forehead, but the face beneath was marred by a stubby
growth of beard.
"Who are you?" whispered Ethel finding her voice.
"Put out the light," he commanded, reaching forward to take it from
her.
"Who are you?" he asked reversing the query as they were again in
darkness.
"I'm a girl," said Ethel.
The man laughed softly.
"I'm not," he said.
Ethel drew herself into a sitting posture. "Which side of this war
are you on?" she asked.
The man was afraid to commit himself--then a happy thought struck
him. "The same side that you are," he answered diplomatically.
It was Ethel's turn to smile.
"You are an American?" she ventured at length.
"Yes," he said. "So are you?"
"Yes."
"Then why are you wearing Japanese clothes?"
"Because--" she said hesitatingly, "I haven't any others."
For some minutes he said nothing.
"Are you going to give the alarm of my presence?" he asked at
length.
"No."
"Then I'll go," he said.
Rising from his knees, but still stooping, he made off rapidly down
the cotton row.
Ethel breathed deeply. Confused thoughts flashed through her mind.
She would not return to go with Komoru; in her Japanese garb she
feared the early morning sweep of American cavalry; but to the man
who had just left her, why could she not explain?
Without further debate, she arose, and at top speed ran after the
retreating figure.
The next instalment of this absorbing tale will
appear in the September issue of PHYSICAL CULTURE.
It tells of how the Japanese attempt to obtain
control of the United States through scientific
measures rather than barbarous warfare, and is
wonderfully interesting and readable. Don't miss
it.
PART THREE.
In the Clutch of the War-God
THE TALE OF THE ORIENT'S INVASION OF THE OCCIDENT, AS CHRONICLED IN
THE HUMANICULTURE SOCIETY'S "NOTES ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY"
By Milo Hastings
SYNOPSIS: In the year of 1958, Ethel Calvert, a
daughter of an American grain-merchant, residing
in Japan, because of her father's death in an
anti-foreign riot, is forced to take refuge, with
Madame Oshima, the French wife of a Japanese
scientist. She becomes accustomed to the land and
mode of living followed by the Japanese, and is
finally persuaded to adopt the costume of the land
of her exile. War is declared between Japan and
the United States, and Professor Oshima, and
Komoru, his Secretary, together with Madame Oshima
and Ethel Calvert, sail for the United States in a
Japanese war vessel. When near the Pacific Coast,
the many men and women who have been passengers on
the vessel, leave the ship by means of aeroplanes,
and sail eastwardly toward Texas, where they
establish plantations and conduct a desultory
warfare by aeroplanes with United States troops.
While working in the fields Ethel discovers a
young American in concealment. He warns her to
keep silent, and immediately runs away.
In a few minutes Ethel had caught up with the man who, more
cautiously, ran before her. Checking her speed, she followed
silently.
For a half-mile she pursued him thus. He came to the end of the
field and dodged into the thicket of bushes that lined the fence
row. He moved more slowly now, and she followed by sound rather than
by sight. At length they came to where a brook ran at right angles
to the fence row. The man stopped and crawled under the barbed-wire
fence and came out on the turnpike that ran alongside.
Ethel, peering out from the bushes, saw him walk boldly forward and
stand upon the end of the stone culvert that conducted the brook
beneath the roadway. For a moment only he remained so, and then
clambered quickly down at the end of the arch and disappeared in the
darkness beneath. She heard a foot splash in the water, and then all
was quiet save the gurgle of the stream.
Climbing over the fence, she top ran forward upon the culvert. She
listened and looked toward either end, resolved to call to him if he
emerged.
As she stood waiting she saw the yellow signal light rise in spirals
higher and higher and then circle slowly in one location. A few
minutes later the dim tail lights of the planes came up out of the
horizon and flew towards the signal light.
After a half-hour of waiting, she boldly resolved to enter the
hiding place of the man she had followed.
Cautiously feeling her way, she clambered down over the end of the
culvert and peered into its black archway.
At first, dimly and then with brighter flash, she saw a light
within. Creeping slowly forward, wading in the stream and stumbling
over rough blocks of stone, she made toward the light. Midway the
passage, the side wall of the culvert had fallen or been torn down
and there in a little damp clay nook, sitting hunched upon a rock
was the silhouette of the unshaven man.
Beyond him glowed the dim light and by its faint rays he was
hurriedly writing in a note book.
With a start he became aware of her presence, and turned the
flash-light upon her.
"I followed you," she stammered. "I want to explain. I'm an American
girl captive among the Japanese."
He stared at her quizzically in the dim light.
"I ran from you," he said, "because I was afraid to trust you--there
are a number of Europeans among the Japanese forces. I couldn't know
that you wouldn't have given the alarm, and for one man to run from
fifty thousand isn't cowardice; it's common sense--even bravery,
perhaps, when there's a cause at stake."
"I understand," replied the girl.
"Won't you be seated?" he said, arising and offering her his place
on the rock. She accepted, and he asked her for more of her story.
In reply she told him whom she was and related as briefly as she
could the incidents of her life that accounted for her peculiar
predicament.
"I suppose I owe you something of an explanation, too;" he said,
when she had finished. "My name is Winslow--Stanley Winslow; I am
--or at least was---the editor of the _Regenerationist_. Do you know
what that is?"
Ethel confessed, that she did not.
"Perhaps I flatter myself, but then I suppose you have had no chance
to keep up on American affairs."
Just then a crash, followed by a whirring, clattering noise broke in
above the sound of the man's voice and the gurgle of the brook
running through their hiding-place.
"What's that?" Winslow exclaimed, starting towards the end of the culvert.
[Illustration: She was washing her woven grass sandals by rubbing
the soles together in the stream.]
Ethel followed him. Before they reached the open the trees in front
of them were lit up by the lurid light of a fire. Beside the road a
hundred yards away was the crumpled mass of a metallic aeroplane.
The gasolene tank had burst open and was blazing furiously.
"Americans," said Winslow; "let's see if the crew are dead."
The gasolene had largely spent itself by the time they reached the
plane.
Poking about in the crumbled debris, they found the driver impaled
upon a lever that protruded from his back.
"I wonder what grounded her," mused Winslow, as he inspected the
dead man with his flash-lamp. "Oh! here we are! Good shooting that,"
he added, pointing with his lamp to a soggy hole in the side of the
man's head.
"I guess they're at it," he said, pressing out his light and turning
his eyes skyward.
The woman, speechless, followed his gaze. Across the sky flashed
here and there brilliant beams of search-lights, but far more
numerous were the swiftly moving star-like tail-lights of the
Japanese planes.
Now and again they heard the crackling of machine guns, occasionally
the burr of a disordered propeller and once the faint call of a
human voice.
"Look," said Ethel, pointing to the southward. "See that brilliant
yellow light. It's the Japanese signal plane; they are all to fly in
towards it, and then, soaring high will escape over the American
lines."
"The lines are a joke," returned Winslow. "It's plane against plane.
And the Japs will get the best of it; or at least they'll get away,
which is all they want. They are going to Dakota, where five train
loads of gasolene will be setting on a siding waiting to be
captured. We printed the story ten days ago, though the
administration papers hooted at the idea."
As they walked back toward the culvert, Ethel stumbled over
something in the roadway. She asked for the light, and discovered to
her horror that she was standing in the midst of the remnants of a
man who had been spattered over the hard macadam of the turnpike.
"Ugh! take me away," she shuddered, averting her eyes and running
toward the stream,
"The gunner fell out of the plane when she lurched, I guess,"
commented Winslow to himself, examining the shreds of clothing
attached to the mangled remains beneath him.
For some reason Winslow did not immediately follow the girl but went
back and looked over the wrecked plane again.
He removed the magazine pistol from the impaled man's pocket and
searched about in the locker until he found a supply of cartridges.
The sky was beginning to brighten from approaching dawn now, and the
searchlight flashes were less brilliant. Winslow stood gazing upward
until the forms of the lower flying planes became visible. Suddenly
he saw a disabled plane come somersaulting out of the air and fall
into a field quarter of a mile away. Evidently there were explosives
aboard, for a shower of flame, smoke and splinters arose where she
fell.
The onlooking man hopped over the fence and ran toward the spot.
There was little to be seen--a mere ragged hole in the sod. As he
unconcernedly walked back he passed at intervals a propeller blade
sticking upright in the soil, a broken can of rice cakes and a
woman's hand.
The dawn had now so far progressed that the observer could see some
order in the movement of the air craft. He studied with fascination
the last of the Japanese planes as they circled up toward their
aerial guide-post and moved thence in a steady stream to the
northward.
The American planes which had been harassing and firing on the
Japanese as they circled for altitude, now turned and closed in on
the rear of the enemy and the fighting was fast and furious. Plane
after plane tumbled sickeningly out of the sky. But for Winslow the
sight lasted only a few minutes, for the combatants were flying at
full speed and soon became mere flitting insects against the gray
light of the morning sky.
Striding down the roadway past the mangled body of the American
gunner, Winslow reached the culvert.
Ethel Calvert was sitting on a flat stone at the edge of the water.
She held her woven grass sandals in her hands and was washing them
by rubbing the soles together in the stream.
As Winslow looked down at her in silence, the girl looked up and
eyed him curiously. Neither spoke. The man stooped and washed his
hands in the brook and then stepping up-stream a few paces he drank
from the rivulet.
Returning he regarded the girl. She had placed her sandals beyond
her on the grassy bank and sat with her bare feet in the shallow
stream. Her head, buried in her arms, rested upon her knees. The
slender shoulders now shook convulsively and the sound of a sob
escaped her. In the calmness of his cynicism, the man sat down on
the rock and placed a strong arm around the trembling woman.
[Illustration: In another moment, he turned in a gap through the
fence and rode down upon the fleeing woman.]
"I know," he said, "it's a dirty damned mess, but we didn't start
it."
After a time the girl raised her head. "I know we didn't start it,"
she said; "but isn't there something we can do to stop it?"
"Well," he replied slowly, "I rather hope to have a hand in stopping
it, and perhaps you can help."
"How?"
"Surely you can do as much in stopping it as one of those poor
devils that get smashed does in keeping it going," he went on.
"How?" she repeated.
"Well, that's quite a long story," he replied; "if you don't already
know."
"I told you who I was."
"Yes."
"Well, the Regenerationists, along with many other sincere men and
women in this country tried to prevent this war and are trying to
get it peaceably settled now. The Japs don't want to die. They want
a chance to live. We've got a lot of vainglorious, debauched,
professional soldiery that wanted to fight something, and now
they're getting their fill. In the first place, there is no need of
war and in the second place, when there is war, the same stamina
that will make efficient humans for the ordinary walks of life will
make good soldiers. But money talks louder than reason. The ruling
powers in American government are a crew of beer-bloated politicians
who are in the pay of a cabal of wine-soaked plutocrats, and the
American people under such administration have become a race of
mental and physical degenerates. The Japs knew this or they would
never have invaded the country."
"What are you going to do about it? And what are you doing here now
within the Japanese lines?" asked Ethel when her companion paused.
"Oh, I am acting as my own war correspondent," he replied, smiling a
little.
"_Pat-a-pat, pat-a-pat_"--Winslow jumped up excitedly and clambered
to the top of the embankment.
Ethel noting his alarm, slipped her feet into her sandals and rose
to follow him.
"Quick," he exclaimed, hurrying down the bank again. "It's American
cavalry."
"But let us go meet them," said the girl.
"No, never," replied Winslow, taking her by the arm and hurrying her
into the culvert. "You don't understand. As for you in kimo, your
reception would be anything but pleasant; and as for me, I'm an
outlaw with a price on my head."
Reaching the chink where the rocks had fallen out of the culvert
wall, Winslow squeezed into it and pulled the girl down beside him.
Carefully he crowded her feet and his own back so that their
presence could not be detected from the end of the culvert.
"I'm afraid we left tracks on the bank, but we can at least die
game," he said, pulling his magazine pistol from his belt and
handing it to the girl, while he drew from his hip pocket the weapon
he had taken from the dead aviator.
"I hate these things," he said, "but when a man is in a corner and
no chance to run, I suppose he's justified in using a cowardly
fighting machine."
They heard clearly now the hoof beats on the roadway above.
Presently an officer rode his horse down to the stream at the head
of the culvert. "Anything under there?" called a voice from above.
"Nothing doing," replied the other, peering beneath the archway.
"You're a fool sitting there like that," called a third voice.
"Company C lost two men back there from a wounded Jap under a
bridge."
The horseman urged his beast up the bank and the troop passed on.
For some hours the man and the girl remained in the culvert;
meanwhile Winslow explained the Regenerationist movement, which was
not as his enemies interpreted, a traitorous party favoring the
Japanese, but only a group of thinkers who advocated principles not
unlike those which had made the Japanese such a superior race either
at peace or at war.
As she listened, it seemed to Ethel as if her own dream had come
true, for here indeed was a man of her own blood with stamina of
physique and mental and moral courage, who professed and practiced
all she had found that was good among the people of her enforced
adoption and in addition much that, to her with her racial prejudice
in his favor, seemed even better than the ways of Japanese.
In reply to her questions as to the cause of his outlawry, Winslow
explained that he and other leaders of his party had long been at
swords' points with the conservatives who were in power and that the
administration, taking advantage of the martial frenzy of the war,
were persecuting the Regenerationists as supposed traitors.
* * *
As the sun indicated mid-forenoon the dishevelled editor of the
Regenerationist and his newly found follower sauntered forth and
took to the turnpike.
"We may as well be on the road," he argued. "The sooner the American
people get the inside facts of this affair the sooner they will
decide to stop it, and it's forty-five miles to the nearest place
where I can get in touch with my people."
Bareheaded, through the hot sun, they travelled rapidly along the
turnpike, keeping a sharp lookout for occasional parties of cavalry
and hiding in the fields until they passed. Sometimes they talked of
the contrasted ways of life in Japan and in America, and again
Winslow wrote hurriedly in his note-book as he walked.
About three o'clock in the afternoon they stopped in the shade where
a rivulet fell over a small cataract.
"Aren't you hungry?" asked Ethel, after they had drunk from the
brook.
"I don't know. I hadn't thought of it particularly," replied her
companion. "Let's see, the last time I ate was in a farmhouse north
of Houston. That was eight days ago. When have you last eaten?"
"Yesterday morning," replied the girl.
"Then you are probably hungrier than I am."
With their conversation and the murmur of the waterfall they had
failed to detect the approach of two cavalry officers, who, walking
their tired mounts, had come up unheeded.
"Hey! look at the beauty in breeches!" called one of the approaching
men.
[Illustration: He rolled a bundle of "Regenerationists" on the wing
of the aeroplane below.]
"Her for mine," returned the other.
"I saw it first--hie!" returned the first, drawing rein.
"Give it to me, you hog; you've got one!"
"All right, all right--go take it--maybe the bum will object,"
laughed the first, as the unshaven Winslow advanced in front of the
girl.
"Run quick," called Winslow to Ethel. "They're too drunk to shoot
straight."
The turnpike was inclosed by a high, woven-wire fence, and the girl
obeying turned down the road. Her would-be claimant put spurs to his
horse and dashed after her, leaving Winslow covering the rear
horseman with his magazine pistol.
"Well," said the drunken officer weakly, "I ain't doing nothing."
"Then ride down the road the other way as fast as you can go."
The officer obeyed.
For a moment Winslow watched him and then turned to see Ethel
climbing over the woven-wire fence with the soldier trying to urge
his horse up the embankment to reach her.
Winslow started to run to the girl's rescue, but no sooner had he
turned than a bullet sang past his ear. Wheeling about he saw the
other cavalryman riding toward him firing as he came.
With lewd brutality calling for vengeance in one direction and a man
firing at his back from the other, Winslow's aversion to bloodshed
became nil; and, aiming cool, he began firing at the approaching
officer.
It must have been the horse that got the bullet, for with the third
shot mount and rider somersaulted upon the macadam.
Without compunction, Winslow turned and sprinted down the roadway.
He saw Ethel dashing across the field, hurdling the cotton rows. The
officer was racing down the road, seeming away from her, but in
another moment he turned through a gap in the fence and rode down
upon the fleeing woman.
The athletic Winslow vaulted the six-foot fence with an easy spring,
and tore madly through the obstructing vegetation.
The rider overtaking the woman, tried to hold her, first by the arm,
and failing in that, he grabbed her by the hair. Winslow wondered
why she did not shoot him, and then he recalled that he was carrying
both weapons.
In another instant he was up with them and had dragged the man from
his horse and flung him to the ground. The soldier kicked and swore,
but half drunk, his resistance was of small consequence to his
well-trained adversary.
"Here," called Winslow to the girl, who had tumbled down in a heap
more from fright than physical exhaustion, "come and get my knife
and cut the rein from the horse's bridle."
Thus equipped, the two strapped their captive's hands and one foot
together behind him.
"There now," said Winslow, as he relieved the officer of his weapon.
"Hop back to the bridge and look after your comrade. He fell on the
turnpike a while ago and I'm afraid he hurt his head. We'll have to
be going."
"Shall we take the horse?" asked Ethel.
"No," replied her companion, beginning to throw clods at the animal,
"we'll simply run him away. As for us, we are safer on foot, and
will in the long run make better time."
"You are not tired, are you?" he asked, as they turned into the
roadway again.
"No," she replied, "only a bit tired and weak from my scare. How far
have we come?"
"Fifteen miles, perhaps; I really hardly know; we've been
interrupted so much."
They made a long detour through the fields to avoid a group of
buildings. Striking the road again, they soon came upon a slight
rise of land that stood well above the level of the surrounding
country.
"Are we not rather conspicuous here?" asked the girl.
"Well, rather," admitted her companion, pausing to look around; "but
I guess we can see as far as we can be seen."
"Look! look!" called Ethel excitedly, jerking her companion's arm
and pointing to the south, where the flat horizon was broken by the
derricks and tanks of the oil fields.
At first Winslow saw nothing, and then shading his eyes he sighted
what looked like a great bevy of birds flying just above the
horizon.
Larger and larger grew the specks against the sky.
"They will be over us in fifteen minutes," said Winslow; "let's get
up in that oak over there, where we can see without being seen."
Safely hidden by the enveloping foliage, the man and the girl now
watched the approach of the planes. As they came over the oil region
the planes began swooping near the ground and then rapidly rising
again.
"Its Japanese after the American cavalry, I guess," said Winslow. In
a few minutes black smoke belched forth at numerous points from the
petroleum works.
After a time a cloud of dust arose from a great meadow that spread
for several miles to the north of the oil wells. A group of
aeroplanes hovered closely above the dust cloud and kept up that
periodical swooping towards the earth.
"It's stampeding cavalry," said the sharp-eyed Ethel, "and the
airmen are dropping bombs on them."
The cloud of dust came nearer and nearer until they could see the
swift fall of the deadly missiles from the swooping planes and the
havoc wrought in the straggling ranks by the showers of pellets from
the shrapnel exploding above their heads.
When the foremost of the cavalry troop were perhaps a quarter of a
mile from the observers, a commanding officer, who was riding well
in the lead, wheeled his horse, threw away his jacket, tore off his
white shirt and waived it frantically above his head.
An answering truce flag soon appeared from a plane above and the
jaded horsemen, riding up, drew rein and waited.
The truce plane now swooped low and dropped a message fastened to a
white cloth. A soldier caught it and brought it to the officer, who
signalled assent.
Orders were called along the line, and the men filed by and piled
their weapons in an inglorious heap.
After this most of the lazy circling planes rose and made off to the
left, while a few assigned to guard duty circled above the
retreating cavalry, as they moved off slowly in the opposite
direction.
Two belated members of the troop, who had lost their horses, flung
themselves down to rest for a moment in the lengthening shadow of
the oak tree.
"Oh Gawd!" said one, as he panted and mopped his forehead. "Oh Gawd!
I was scared! That damned shrapnel bursting right over us and no
chance to fight back or get away. It ain't no fair fighting like
that--you can't get at 'em."
"They've tricked us, they have," returned his companion. "Our own
airmen's up in Nebraska chasing the Japs that gave us the slip this
morning, and here these damn hawks come swooping in. I reckon it's
reinforcements from Japan. The transports that brought the first
bunch must have been back and got another load, and this time it
seems to be regular soldiers--here to kill--the others were just
decoys."
"No, they ain't exactly decoys; they're here to stay and raise
families, and damned if that ain't what I'm going to do, if I ever
get out of this. Gawd! our loss must be something awful, and they're
at it yet. Look! see 'em over there by Beaumont like a flock of
crows. The bunch that got us was just a few of them."
For a time both soldiers eyed the distant fighting.
"When I get out of this," continued the first speaker; "when I get
out, I'm going to join the Regenerationists."
"What's that; peace cranks?"
"Yep; but it's more than that, it's health cranks and temperance
cranks, and moral cranks, and socialist cranks, and every other kind
of crank that believes in people being decent and living
happy--health, quiet lives, instead of fighting and robbing
and--boozing and abusing themselves and each other to death."
"Oh, Hell! don't preach just because you're scared," said the other,
getting up.
"Call it preaching if you like, but believe me, I've been getting
letters from the folks back home, and my people ain't such poor
stuff either, if I did join the army, and I want to tell you that
such preaching is getting damn popular lately. This fall's election,
you know, and the way we've been done up here to-day, will have a
lot to do with the outcome."
"We'd better move," said the other, looking up. "That Jap up there
thinks we're going back after our guns."
* * *
With the oil regions again in the hands of the vigilant Japanese,
Winslow and Ethel found escape more perilous and difficult. But on
the third night they succeeded in getting through the lines and
reaching Winslow's confederates, who were awaiting him near St.
Charles, La. From hence they travelled by aeroplane to a secluded
railroadless valley in the heart of the Ozarks.
It was here that the secret printing plant of the _Regenerationist_
had been established. Ethel knew nothing of printing or journalism,
but a place was found for her in the department of circulation.
While news could be received via wireless, the paper and supplies,
as well as the men who went to and fro from the secret printing
plant of the outlawed publication, had to be transported by plane.
Aviators with sufficient skill and daring for the task were hard to
find. Already at home in the air, it was only a few days until Ethel
was driving a plane on a paper route.
The seven hundred miles to Denver she covered one night, returning
the next. She started out with half a ton of papers--seventy-two
thousand copies--which in suitable bundles were dropped by the boy
in the center of the triangular signal fires which local agents
built at night in open fields.
Once she lost her load by a fall in the Kansas River, and once she
ran out of fuel and held up a rich country house at the point of a
pistol and demanded the supply of automobile gasoline.
Worst of all, she was chased one night by a government secret
service plane. Despairing of outflying them, she got and held the
position directly above their craft, while the boy rolled a
two-hundred-pound bale of _Regenerationists_ over on the other's
wing and sent the Federal airmen somersaulting into eternity.
But these stirring times did not last long. With the second Japanese
invasion and the Orientals now established in two widely separated
sections of the country, the authorities at Washington soon acceded
to a truce, and one of the immediate results was abolition of
martial law and re-establishment of a free press.
Throughout the summer, in the rice lands in the South, and the wheat
lands of the North, the Japanese lived, harmless gardeners of their
newly acquired possessions. But their gasoline tanks were full and
they carried sufficient conflagration bombs to have fired every city
from New Orleans to St. Paul, had the truce been broken by American
treachery.
The _Regenerationist_, now removed to St. Louis, was again a
full-sized newspaper. The party in power, supported by the
capitalistic and military classes, preached old-fashioned patriotism
and with martial music and flying flags tried to enthuse the people.
But the terror of the American soldiery in the unfair battle of
Beaumont had gone abroad throughout the land. The people feared the
draft for military service--they feared the firing of the
cities--the poisoning of their water supplies and a hundred other
spectres which in the minds of a degenerate and servile city
population the presence of a successful aerial enemy had inspired.
The reform party of the _Regenerationists_ had by the fortunes of
war achieved a tremendous growth. Their recruits came both from the
better element who had thus been awakened from their lethargy, and
from the cowardly rabble who supported peace because of the terror
in their hearts.
Gerald Stoddard, Chancellor of the University of Illinois, a big
sound man of clean mind and clean body, was chosen as the radical
presidential candidate, and won with an overwhelming majority.
His election meant peace between the warring powers, and strong
likelihood of peace in the world for all time to come. It also meant
other things. It meant the complete inversion of the American policy
and the welcoming of science as the servant of mankind's larger
needs and not merely a flunky to the degenerate, luxury-loving few.
President-elect Stoddard, with masterful hand, began at once the
organization of the new administration. Among the appointees whom he
early announced was that of Stanley Winslow, to the position of
Secretary of Public Health.
In his telegram of acceptance, Winslow said:
"In signifying my intention of accepting the position of Secretary
of Public Health in your Cabinet, I wish to say that it will be my
sole purpose to prove myself possessed of the larger patriotism
which would defend our race against retrogression and annihilation,
not by such antiquated and inefficient methods as immigration
restriction or mechanical warfare, but by the improvement of the
race itself."
And Ethel, too, sent a telegram. It read:
PROFESSOR AND MADAME OSHIMA,
JAPANESE OCCUPATION,
SOUTH DAKOTA.
As soon as travel is freely established come and visit us. When are
the children coming over?
ETHEL CALVERT WINSLOW,
Care the _Regenerationist_.
St. Louis, Mo.
But of Komoru she said not a word. She couldn't forget the
unfathomable look in his eyes. At times she even argued with herself
that the poor fellow had loved her, but had feared to express
himself because he believed (as he had stated in his scientific
essays) that inter-racial marriages were uneugenic and hence
immoral.
End of Project Gutenberg's In the Clutch of the War-God, by Milo Hastings
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